Financial independence, it is a huge privilege for some of us, and an inspiring dream for others. It is the bedrock principle for this community whether you are a frugalista, a tiny houser, a blogger extraordinaire, an investing guru, a minimalist extreme or a side gigging entrepreneur. In a close knit but diverse community like ours it comes close to being the one unifying theory that everyone holds to. It is the concept that by living on less than you earn you can reach a point where you do not have to work a full time job to meet all of your material needs. After that we all go in different directions. Some advocate living on $10 per day in some remote part of the world, some live with few possessions and enjoy the simplicity and freedom that brings them, some hustle for small or large fortunes as they build internet empires and a few play that corporate game so well they can walk away early to a life of volunteering or travel. Finally, a few do not ever intend to retire but enjoy knowing they can.
That last group was me. If you had asked me ten years ago when I was going to retire I would have told you without hesitation that I planned on working into my seventies. And I meant it, work was one of my favorite hobbies and I had a high-profile job that stroked my ego and left me feeling very good about myself most of the time (I realize that sounds pretty shallow but I’m being honest here). At that time, ten years ago, I was already financially independent but I did not comprehend what that meant and had never run the numbers or even given the idea a thought. I had never read a blog on early retirement or on financial independence and in my mind retirement was just what you did when you could no longer contribute in a career. It was a type of personal failure only a few steps short of death or incarceration in a nursing home. Crazy, right? I know, that sounds insane to me now, but I clearly remember thinking those thoughts.
And I also know what you are thinking, “You are such a typical workaholic boomer!” So sad for this guy to be so enslaved and one dimensional. But that was not the case, that was not me at all. I was living a very diverse and active life. I was running marathons with my running buds and my wife, we had kids in high school and college, we were playing tennis, hiking, skiing and fishing and I never stayed later at work than I had to. I looked forward to my family and leisure time and by all accounts was a pretty decent dad and husband. While work was a fun hobby it was not my whole life, just a part of it. And life was good, no midlife crisis for me and no regret I had not done more. In fact, I felt like a guy who had won the lottery because I was overpaid but not overworked and every area of my life was running pretty smoothly.
But then some things happened. My mom passed away and my dad began to decline at an increasing rate due to Parkinson’s and that confronted me with the fact that he had worked and saved into his seventies only to be rewarded with a wife who was assaulted by Alzheimer’s and with his own terminal illness. At the same time I stumbled upon the personal finance, financial independence and retire early blogosphere and podcast genre. It shocked me to realize that people with only a portion of my net worth were successfully retiring in their thirties and that the math was solid. Finally, after my dad passed away and my brother and I amicably settled the estate we were both recipients of a sizeable inheritance equivalent to more than I would have been able to save if I worked another ten years. And finally, the family owned corporation I had worked at for 28 years was sold to a Fortune 500 company which put my job at risk and brought drama and politics into what had been a kind and gentle place.
It would have been the perfect time to leave, right? But no, my plan was still the same, work into my seventies. I’m an eternal optimist and I saw opportunity and excitement in a changing workplace. And I was right, at first. I had some great projects and then earned a big promotion which came with big compensation and I was pretty happy for a couple of years. And that was when financial independence killed my career.
It has been a struggle, three years after leaving the 9 to 5, to explain to myself what happened. If I was working for fun instead of for money then why did having more than enough money make it stop being fun? We are so conditioned to needing money that the very concept of having enough seems hypothetical to most people. Surveys always show that when millionaires are asked how much money they need to feel comfortable or wealthy they estimate it to be about twice what they currently possess. If they have one million then they say they would feel rich with two million but if they have five million then they say they would need ten million. We are all naturally greedy misers deep down, apparently. Yet by immersing myself in the personal finance community and by seeing how my dad died without being able to enjoy what he had saved and invested I finally began to grasp the concept of “enough”. The compensation of paychecks, bonuses and stock grants lost most of its meaning because I had enough. And though I had always said I would do my job for free, I realized that was not true. A big part of the fun was that the hard work was rewarded by something my family needed and they did not need it anymore, we simply had enough.
Also, I worked for status and relevance. My job was very public and I was like a small-town mayor in that hundreds of people worked for me and thousands worked with our company so people were nice to me everywhere I went in my small state. That’s pretty heady stuff for a guy who was the least cool member of his high school class. But losing loved ones impresses on your heart that life is very short and that eventually you will leave your job and whatever social status it provided you. Since I was going to have to reinvent myself anyway why not do it now?
Watching how the new corporation worked made it obvious to me that I unless I chose first I would not have a choice in when I left my job. Compared to the family I had worked for the Fortune 500 world is a real meat grinder. When you get into the corporate officer ranks, longevity is highly unlikely. Executives came and went almost weekly and I was not going to be immune to that. The corporate mentality is that if anything goes wrong, throw out the tool and get a new one out of the tool box. And I could see I was a very expendable tool in their hands. That is really clear in hindsight because I have been gone for less than three years and they have already tried three different people in my old job so far without finding someone they are satisfied with.
These three things changed everything for me at work. Having enough money and not being driven to earn more, realizing the status was fleeting and would run out someday and realizing that they were going to churn people through my position so I had zero chance of surviving all destroyed my job satisfaction. Work became surprisingly difficult and for the first time in my life, joyless. I became uncooperative, unmotivated and increasingly intolerant of absorbing criticism and threatened consequences. What, they might fire me? That had been the scariest idea ever for most of my career but now the thought made me smile and struggle to suppress mad giggles or sarcastic retorts.
Financial independence ruined my career. And I’m so very glad it did. So I left it behind three years ago. We parted amicably and the corporation is doing extremely well. I still occasionally do some consulting for them and enjoy it because it is on my terms and drama free. My mix of paid and volunteer side gigs and recreational pursuits are satisfying and what has always been a good life is even better now.
What does this mean for you as you pursue financial independence? Well, it means a lot. Becoming financially independent will change how you value some of the things that currently motivate you. And it may change them in ways that make you less employable. Being FI means you’ve made it, in a real sense you’ve won the lottery. One of the most quoted lines I see in this space is that being financially independent means that I will only do what I choose to do. When people say that they are saying in effect that being FI will let them avoid things they do not want to experience, like tedious cubicle jobs.
In a world where much of life follows the carrot and stick model of motivation being FI makes you carrot careless and stick free. You stop valuing the little pittances they toss to you and you lose your fear of punishment. In a world where everyone else has a carrot/stick mind you are now a weirdo, a completely unmanageable person. And the world hates weird. I saw that personally, once the stick stopped scaring me, then I started to scare my superiors. Plus the carrot is not so big a motivating treat once you have enough money. You are now doubly odd and uncontrollable which is something most management systems cannot understand and cannot tolerate.
The changes that financial independence brings are both good and bad. It makes you unsuitable in an organization that uses fear and reward as the go to motivational techniques. That’s bad because that represents most of the corporate world today. The good is that you become more than perfect for anything that has a vision you can internalize. Being fearless is a pretty awesome feature when you are doing things that matter.
Most of you are on the journey to financial independence and many of you are not in the same kind of corporate environment I was but I think most of you will eventually reach your goals, that is just who you are. This is written to caution you that there are consequences to targeting financial independence as a goal and some of them may force you to reshape your plans entirely like I did. I love what I’m doing now but the fact is, achieving financial independence ruined my career plans of working another ten years in my corporate job.
What about you, are you planning on staying at your job after you are financially independent?
Do you think that financial independence might make you unemployable in a carrot and stick world?
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i’ve worked for a couple of private smaller companies and looked at those as my role being necessary to support my coworkers so they could have jobs. that loyalty was real. i agree, steve, about the meat grinder aspect with a big public company. we could stop working today and have enough to spend what we spent this year in perpetuity, but having become f.i., i don’t mind coming here. i report to a guy who knows all this and also knows i have no fear of the stick and he respects that. i don’t abuse it and do good work because i like and respect him, but 2 more years and i’m out, or if we decide sooner where we want to live. fearless is a good feeling.
That’s where I was Freddy until the work environment changed to a much bigger stick kind of place. Even when it did not scare me anymore I hated seeing my team being treated harshly because they were still living in fear, none of them were even close to FI. I felt a lot of loyalty to my people and felt a little guilty leaving them behind when I left.
This is the whole point of FI, right? The career you loved drastically changed, and you didn’t have to go with it. Powerful when you are in charge of your life trajectory.
Well there you go, I may be older but you are smarter! It took me a couple of years to figure that out, but I guess I had so much inertia from a long and happy career or maybe I just was in denial. Anyway it did all work out fine just as you said, because I was in charge of my life.
My father was the inspiration for me and why I wanted to leave the workforce early enough to enjoy retirement. He passed away at the age of 50 (I was 14) and was a very hard working doctor. I’m sure he planned for a golden retirement while he was working but unfortunately that time never came. I just turned 47 so it is sad to realize that my dad only lived 3 more years than what I currently have. But it gave me a reason to shoot for FIRE so that whenever my time has come, I would at least be able to do stuff I wanted in my terms and not spending it trying to earn money. I’m getting close to the goal line so hopefully can reduce and hopefully eliminate my main occupation and concentrate on things that I enjoy but maybe not as monetarily rewarding (starting a blog has been a passion of mine and finally decided to do that for instance).
That is a powerful personal experience. I love your blog and comments, very insightful. It sounds like a good plan. You have the same issue I do in that you are earning a lot of money and even when you do not need another solitary cent it is still difficult to walk away from when you remember being a broke student and resident. My last year of work I made almost twice what I had typically been making and the future was bright to just keep piling it up but I did get it into my head that time has a value also and it was slipping away from me. My son is in residency as a radiation oncologist so I have to give you doc’s your due now that I raised one!
Yes time is definitely the most precious commodity. I’m glad you have found a great solution with occasional consulting gigs. If I didn’t have a daughter, I probably hit my FI # a few times over as my lifestyle is pretty low cost (past few years I’ve actually been having a savings rate >75%. I’m trying to make her be set for college and possibly graduate school (but the way those tuitions are rising it’s hard to figure out what a good goal to shoot for is). That more than anything has me keeping 1 foot in the door. Congrats for raising a doctor, it speaks volumes of both the parent and child. (also appreciate the comment about my blog, it’s about 2 1/2 months old now and slowly getting some footing)
This is such a great post, Thinking reaching FI will fix everything is untrue. But also, getting to FI leads you to a little crisis. What now? What’s important in life?
Thanks Doc, In some ways I’m still looking to see if there is more I should be, could be doing. I think there might be.
I’m totally with you about how financial independence removes fear of punishment. I behaved much differently in my job than my co-workers. In some ways that allowed me to accomplish more but I, too, became disenchanted.
My father also died from Parkinson’s and both he and my mother had little opportunity to enjoy their later years. I also had a few older friends when I was younger, who died within a year or two of retiring in their 60s. They put off things they had the money to do while working, but not the time or energy.
I’m glad you left your job while the decision was still yours to make!
Thank you Mrs. Groovy. It always amazes me how awesome this community is at accepting new voices. I’m a nobody in this world but when someone like you comments, its like back in high school having the head cheerleader grab my elbow and ask me how I’m doing! Not that that ever happened to me, but if it had it would have been almost as cool as having you or Doc G or Financial Sam make a comment. I’m sorry for you and your father, Parkinson’s is an awful experience. I’m glad my wonderful wife and I were there to ease his ten year battle but it was hard to watch and hard to experience his pain.
Thanks, that’s very flattering. But we’re nobodies too. Mr. G says we’re “just a couple of ham and eggers”. Whatever you’re doing keep doing it because you have a great voice.
Great post and I totally agree with you. I found that FI does completely change the entire work mindset and dynamic. I have always accepted that retirement was the absence of needing to work, not the absence of working. I enjoy pursuing opportunities of interest where money isn’t the motivation. Having FI did add complexity to the employment equation. I was no longer open to putting up with unfair treatment or policies for very long. The longer you are in a position the more likely it will happen. In FI I only take on opportunities I want to learn or do, but once I feel interest has waned I just retire again. It is an amazing feeling to actually be able to stand up and say no thank you, lets call this good, and walk away. To the corporate world that isn’t an attractive ability, but keeping my FI status in stealth mode is half the fun.
We are definitely on the same page! The corporate world can’t handle the truth when the truth is you do not need them anymore. Thanks for the insightful comment!
Yes! When are eyes are opened to what is real, the fantasy/nightmare of what we were living in no longer has power over us.
When I retired a year ago, my manager kept pressing me to stay. I did not. But he wanted me around, so I have been working two days a month. It is great. I go in on those days when I feel like and work as many hours as I want and leave when I want and bill them for the hours worked. And I have no real “deliverables”, just answer questions and do whatever I am asked. Then I leave. Two weeks later I am back.
When I retired it was like I woke up. Working day in and day out year after year is like living in a world that we think is the real world. But it is not. It is a manufactured world designed to keep us chained to the wheel. Once we stop working, all of a sudden my time is my own. I can go outside in front of my house on a workday morning and all I hear are birds. Nothing else is moving. It is a joy to be human again.
It really does have that Matrix feel when viewed from the other side of employment! I’m so glad you are living the dream.
Steve,
Great write up. Way more honest, as usual, than most people writing in this space.
Funny thing. Once I got to FI, I had a different reaction at work. I just stopped taking it all so seriously. That annoying boss? I just laughed about how absurd he was.
All the leverage over me was gone, and the whole thing started to seem like a game with a lot of absurdity thrown in. For me it was freeing.
Yes, I did eventually leave. But it wasn’t a huge deal. I’m a lot younger than you; so I didn’t leave thinking I wouldn’t work anymore. Rather that I would be self-driven and work for myself. It’s been more challenging than I expected, but also just awesome.
Keep up the writing. I love the honesty and lack of hype.
P.S. Sorry about putting my URL on that post. Typo on my part.
I get that wanting to laugh at the boss part, but in my case he wasn’t someone you could laugh at and keep working there. So until I decided to go I did have to smother a couple of giggles. It was absurd that a boss thinks he has absolute control over an employee, that’s only possible when the employee plays along!
Sorry to read that your dad died from Parkinsons and your mom had Alzheimer’s. Those are both terrible diseases to watch your parents suffer and struggle with.
FIOR is the term for it. Having a sizeable nest egg gives you the flexibility and power to know that you don’t have to rely on your work income. It really decreases the stress level and gives you a bit more ‘spring in your step’ when heading to work, IMO, though I am not FIOR yet so I will update you in a few years 😉
I know you will get there! Thanks for you compassion also. I only choose to work a day or two a week now, which may be kind of lazy but I also do a day or two of volunteer work and squeeze in a whole bunch of fun active hobbies, plus this blogging. Life is good!